4 ms·

Tempe police obtained the video from Uber, Uber could have easily altered it before handing it over. Uber has behaved badly in the past, and they had the motiva

Tempe police obtained the video from Uber, Uber could have easily altered it before handing it over. Uber has behaved badly in the past, and they had the motivation and past experience to do what it takes to advance their agenda. Remember, Uber terminated its autonomous driving testing as a result of this preventable tragedy.

lhorie 8y ago
> Tempe police obtained the video from Uber If by "from Uber", you mean they popped the SD card from the Uber-owner car's dashcam, sure. > Uber could have easily altered it before handing it over See my comment from the last time someone had suggested the idea of doctored videos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644663
- assblaster 8y ago
  What's the timeframe on the video being handled, given to police, etc. Do the police have the authority to take any video files recorded by a vehicle involved in an auto accident? Is a warrant needed? It's more likely that the police opened an investigation, and as part of the investigation, handed over dashcam footage. We have no reason to believe the police simply confiscated the video files on the night of the accident.
  - lhorie 8y ago
    IIRC the video was released by the police the next day > We have no reason to believe the police simply confiscated the video files on the night of the accident. From my own experience, the police will take dashcam video evidence the first chance they get because it's the best data they can get their hands on while on a scene. Source: I had interactions with the police on two separate occasions (once when my dashcam happened to record a car break-in taking place as I was driving into a parking lot, and once when some guy road raged me). On the second occasion, they were reviewing the video less than 15 minutes from the time of the incident and had the whole thing resolved within the hour. Besides, as I said earlier, Uber itself is making a statement admitting it was at fault, and the NTSB investigation has way more forensic data than the crappy quality dashcam video police released, so I don't see how doctoring the dashcam video would fit into the narrative.
    - drcode 8y ago
      > so I don't see how doctoring the dashcam video would fit into the narrative. Well, at the end of the day this is all involves a strong element of PR & perceptions, so regardless of the quality of other data, it would be very much in Uber's interest to have a super dark video be in the initial stories about this accident.
      - lhorie 8y ago
        > it would be very much in Uber's interest to have a super dark video Why? As soon as the video came out, the first thing people (correctly) pointed out was that the dynamic range of the dashcam was crap. Besides, everyone knows that self-driving cars are essentially giant self-telemetry collection machines, so one would have to be either extremely short-sighted or incredibly stupid to think they would be able to get away with a "well it was too dark!" lie after the NTSB got on the case and the media caught wind of the shenanigans. Also, as I said in my linked comment above, the logistics of actually attempting to tamper the video would be borderline comical. It's much more plausible that the dashcam dynamic range was in fact crap and that the police officers at the scene were smart enough to figure out to just pop off the SD card off the dashcam.
        drcode 8y ago
        I agree with this, Occam's Razor suggests your description of events is more likely.
        drcode 8y ago
        To be fair, I doubt the police just "popped the SD card out of dashcam"... more likely Uber had managers (and lawyers) at the scene within a short time window and Uber had time for very careful deliberations before handing anything to the NTSB (though as you say it's still more likely the got they raw dashcam footage instead of an altered video) Here is the more likely order of events: 1. Driver calls supervisor 2. Supervisor redirects call to senior Uber lawyer 3. Uber lawyer says "Don't do anything until we get to the scene. Be polite to police but tell them to wait until our legal team arrives" 4. Legal team at scene, talks with uber CEO (and senior lawyers over phone) then after an hour or so tells NTSB they will hand over footage after engineer arrives and extracts the dashcam footage 5. Engineer hands dashcam footage to lawyers, who then hand it to NTSB
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

lhorie 8y ago

> Tempe police obtained the video from Uber If by "from Uber", you mean they popped the SD card from the Uber-owner car's dashcam, sure. > Uber could have easily altered it before handing it over See my comment from the last time someone had suggested the idea of doctored videos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16644663

assblaster 8y ago
What's the timeframe on the video being handled, given to police, etc. Do the police have the authority to take any video files recorded by a vehicle involved in an auto accident? Is a warrant needed? It's more likely that the police opened an investigation, and as part of the investigation, handed over dashcam footage. We have no reason to believe the police simply confiscated the video files on the night of the accident.
- lhorie 8y ago
  IIRC the video was released by the police the next day > We have no reason to believe the police simply confiscated the video files on the night of the accident. From my own experience, the police will take dashcam video evidence the first chance they get because it's the best data they can get their hands on while on a scene. Source: I had interactions with the police on two separate occasions (once when my dashcam happened to record a car break-in taking place as I was driving into a parking lot, and once when some guy road raged me). On the second occasion, they were reviewing the video less than 15 minutes from the time of the incident and had the whole thing resolved within the hour. Besides, as I said earlier, Uber itself is making a statement admitting it was at fault, and the NTSB investigation has way more forensic data than the crappy quality dashcam video police released, so I don't see how doctoring the dashcam video would fit into the narrative.
  - drcode 8y ago
    > so I don't see how doctoring the dashcam video would fit into the narrative. Well, at the end of the day this is all involves a strong element of PR & perceptions, so regardless of the quality of other data, it would be very much in Uber's interest to have a super dark video be in the initial stories about this accident.
    - lhorie 8y ago
      > it would be very much in Uber's interest to have a super dark video Why? As soon as the video came out, the first thing people (correctly) pointed out was that the dynamic range of the dashcam was crap. Besides, everyone knows that self-driving cars are essentially giant self-telemetry collection machines, so one would have to be either extremely short-sighted or incredibly stupid to think they would be able to get away with a "well it was too dark!" lie after the NTSB got on the case and the media caught wind of the shenanigans. Also, as I said in my linked comment above, the logistics of actually attempting to tamper the video would be borderline comical. It's much more plausible that the dashcam dynamic range was in fact crap and that the police officers at the scene were smart enough to figure out to just pop off the SD card off the dashcam.
      - drcode 8y ago
        I agree with this, Occam's Razor suggests your description of events is more likely.
      - drcode 8y ago
        To be fair, I doubt the police just "popped the SD card out of dashcam"... more likely Uber had managers (and lawyers) at the scene within a short time window and Uber had time for very careful deliberations before handing anything to the NTSB (though as you say it's still more likely the got they raw dashcam footage instead of an altered video) Here is the more likely order of events: 1. Driver calls supervisor 2. Supervisor redirects call to senior Uber lawyer 3. Uber lawyer says "Don't do anything until we get to the scene. Be polite to police but tell them to wait until our legal team arrives" 4. Legal team at scene, talks with uber CEO (and senior lawyers over phone) then after an hour or so tells NTSB they will hand over footage after engineer arrives and extracts the dashcam footage 5. Engineer hands dashcam footage to lawyers, who then hand it to NTSB
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]